Villordsutch reviews Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming #5…
And so we come to the final, closing issue of Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming from IDW Publishing, and it’s been fantastic so far. With the USS Voyager and its crew cruelly dragged from the doorstep of Earth and flung into Fluidic Space at the many feet of a vengeful Species 8472, the stakes couldn’t be higher. However, this being the closing issue, both Tilly and Susan Bridges have the perilous mission of “sticking the landing”. With so many threads blowing in the breeze, can they gather them all up and turn this into one great, Voyager-inspired tapestry to remember?
With the Bridge Crew of the USS Voyager now held prisoner by Species 8472, they find themselves sharing a cell with faux-Boothby and faux Valerie Archer — the Fluidic Space visitors who originally set up a peace treaty with Voyager — and also the real Admiral Paris, who has apparently been imprisoned for the past four years. Faux-Boothby explains that he and the original visitors to the Alpha Quadrant, who brokered peace, are now considered traitors and have been dubbed Rebels.
Meanwhile, over on Voyager, the remaining Borg, along with the Doctor and Seven, have urgently increased the manufacture of Borg nanoprobes to destroy Species 8472. However, without weapon systems, there is no way to deploy their potential lifesaver. Time is running out, Tuvok is close to death, and it’s just been revealed that a past ally may have the only way out of Fluidic Space. It has never been so close for the crew of Voyager.
Here we are again — words cannot truly express how happy I was when I closed this comic and felt that the perfect ending had arrived. In my heart, I knew I had no doubts. The current run of Star Trek comics from IDW has been brilliant — see Star Trek: Red Shirts — but the mind still itches and worries. However, come the close, after an absolutely frantic ending that sits just two steps away from the “Star Trek: Voyager – Endgame” finale Borg escape, everything felt just right. Both Susan and Tilly have shown they are true Voyager fans here, delivering an ending — and new beginnings — for those crew members we’ve come to know and love over the last few decades.
The only slight misstep within this issue is Admiral Paris. He feels somewhat tacked on to give Tom more emotional weight, which is odd considering he already has his wife, his new child, and Voyager itself — holding his friends and the crew he has lived with for the past seven years. Given that the final few pages are brilliantly dedicated to closing the chapters of the Bridge Crew members, I find it odd that Tilly and Susan didn’t retain Admiral Paris for this section of the comic. Unless, of course, there’s a bigger story unfolding, and I’m yet to see the whole picture. I did pick up on the Pathfinder mention. Perhaps I should keep quiet — this paragraph will probably come back to bite me in a few months. Still, I’ll die on this hill for now. I feel removing the few panels of Admiral Paris in the middle could have given us more time with the rebels from Species 8472.
Still, all of this being said, the entire run of Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming has been one of the best slices of Star Trek I’ve been lucky enough to read in a long while. I’ve genuinely been waiting for each issue to arrive so I could read the continuing adventures of Captain Janeway and her crew. These pages over the past few months have never disappointed — from the writing of Susan and Tilly Bridges to the art and colours from Angel Hernandez and colourist Charlie Kirchoff. I want, and need, more. I hope the entire team involved are invited back – by IDW – to deliver a special every year or so. I understand not over-egging the pudding, but they can’t leave it with just Homecoming. Fingers crossed that, somewhere down the line, we get something just as brilliant.
Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming has been truly amazing. Tilly and Susan Bridges have been the best possible fans to bring this story to the page.
Rating: 9/10
@Villordsutch
